Chapter 7

Life In Motion

The Fifth and Sixth Days

The Sixth Day:

Land Creatures

CATTLE AFTER THEIR KIND

Cattle is a generic term that refers to all animals that would be used domestically by man. That includes cows, sheep, pigs, goats, deer, camels, bison, horses and other such mammals. Beasts of the earth would be all other wild animals. The environment under the canopy enabled even these mundane creatures to grow to enormous sizes. Fossils of pigs have been found to be as large as a man. Deer antlers have been found measuring over twelve feet in width. Bison stood seven and a half feet high at the shoulders, compared to today's bison measured at four and a half feet. Camels used to be over twelve feet tall. And giant horses have been found frozen in the Alaskan tundra as well as woolly mammoths measuring up to nineteen feet at the shoulder [6].

THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH

The fossils have also shown that there once were giant kangaroos, giant bears, and giant beavers that were eight feet long [7]. As a general statement, fossils show that mammals of the past were 30% to 40% greater in length or height [8]. Ground sloths which are normally only the size of an average monkey used to grow up to eighteen feet in length. Rhinoceroses grew up to seventeen feet tall and thirty feet long. Gigantic remains of lions, tigers, and elephants have been found frozen in the Alaskan tundra [9]. And with the woolly mammoths there were giant mastodons and saber tooth tigers which have been found in California [10].

EVERYTHING THAT CREEPETH UPON THE EARTH

This category can refer to all the insects, reptiles, and amphibians that God created. Of the insects, fossil remains have been found of giant dragonflies measuring six inches in body length with a wingspan measuring over two feet wide. Cockroaches grew up to a foot in length. Even the tiny millipede which today is only a couple of inches in length used to be as long as a cow [11]! God also created the trilobite at this time. This creature is now extinct, but evolutionists claim that it lived during the Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era 541 million years ago. The fossils, however, are from the Flood only 4,500 years ago.

Reptiles are well known for their growth in size. Disregarding the dinosaurs at this time, there are many giant lizards still alive today, as had been in the past. Alligators and crocodiles are still large creatures today at six to ten feet long. They have been measured in fossil remains up to fifty feet in length [12]. Still alive today are the giant Komodo dragons found on the Indonesian island of Komodo. There are also large iguana lizards in South America today [13]. In fact, there are reports of large "dinosaurs" still alive in the Congo basin of Africa. When drawings of the Brontosaurus or Sauropods were shown to a tribe in the Congo, they called the creature, "Mokele-Mbembe" [14]. There are other reports and traditions of large "dinosaur" type creatures still alive today in the heart of Africa.

In the creative genius of God, not only were all these giant creatures of creation that range from vegetation through the animal kingdom a part of His first paradise, but plants and creatures of normal and tiny size were created, too. Our God is a God of artistic variety and He made all things good and beautiful.